


and every color illuminates

by couragetofight



Category: Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: Carol Rambeau, F/F, Introspection, Mixed-up Memories, Slight Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 02:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18929056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couragetofight/pseuds/couragetofight
Summary: It’s strange, realizing that she doesn’t even know her own name.





	and every color illuminates

It’s strange, realizing that she doesn’t even know her own name. The file that Fury dug up at Pegasus is little more than a blank page – just another place where her existence has been scrubbed clean. There were no records on Hala, no records on C-53.

Despite this lack, there was a possibility (it was the truth, her heart whispered to her) that she had come from this place, this back-water planet that felt so foreign but also like _home_ (the word brings with it strange pictures – fleeting sensations of small hands in hers, of strong arms around her waist).

It was as if she had blinked and millennia had passed, like the world had rearranged itself around her. Six years of carefully constructed knowledge, an identity she had formed under the careful eye of Yonn-Rogg slips through her fingers like sand. Suddenly nothing that she had learned from them – her people, she had thought – nothing she learned from them could be trusted, not even her own name.  

It was Vers that she had known for the last six years, a name barked at her in exasperation by any given member of her star-force team. It was Vers that the supreme intelligence had murmured to her, coaxing her with promises of fulfilling her duty – but then again, she didn’t truly know that face either. Lawson. Marr Vel. As much as she hadn’t known as Vers, she knows even less now.

Some part of her wants to drown in the not-knowing, wants to let it sweep her away. A larger part of her is ravenous for every part of herself that she has ever lost.

It is warm in Louisiana and – humid? Yes, it is humid, a moistness that envelops her in a way that the dry California air had not. She shrugs her cap and leather jacket off on auto-pilot, tugging at her top. It suddenly feels like she is ill-dressed for this meeting. She dismisses the feeling though – it echoes in her head – _‘control your emotions’_.

Fury seems to weigh the gravity of the situation the same as she had, however, and he hangs back as she takes a step forward. And another. And another – and she had not considered what she would say to this woman, who had seen her last six years ago, who most probably thought she was dead, who—

_Control your emotions._

“I’m looking for a Maria Rambeau” she says, and it is swift and business-like. It’s the greeting of a soldier, of someone on a mission.

It is not the greeting of an ‘Auntie Carol’, as this kid, this little girl so gleefully calls her.

Her arms are coming up to encircle this girl’s shoulders before she even realizes that she is being embraced.

“Carol” Maria Rambeau sighs out, whispers like anything louder than that would cause her to just disappear. (Fingertips brush over her jaw and it is the same whisper, “Carol”. She is crying but warm hands hold her, do not mind her flailing fists, “Carol”. Fingers reach across an impossible gap – reach across no gap at all and interlace with her own, “Carol”. Carol, Carol, Carol, Carol).

It’s a puzzle piece fitting into place, a discordant string falling into to tune. “It’s Vers” she says, and it rings false to her own ears.

It doesn’t take her much convincing to tell them everything – no, indeed it takes her no convincing at all. It’s another one of those pesky ‘gut feelings’ that Fury had been claiming was so human on the way there – these two people were to be trusted absolutely.

Fury seems ready to give her grief about telling them, but that doesn’t stop her from using her hand to heat up the kettle sitting on the stove behind her. She desperately wants – needs – to be believed by these two, to be trusted by them.

There’s a look in their eyes – eyes they barely seem to be able to tear away from her.

It sparks something in her in turn, a knowledge that this is a bond far stronger than any that she had known as Vers (she thinks that it’s called family).

She sits across from Maria Rambeau and wishes more than she ever has in the past six years that she could remember. She sees shy smiles over coffee cups and tells Maria that she just gets flashes. She wants to piece together that one morning, yes, but she also wants to piece together every morning from her life before.

Maria tells her that this moment isn’t hard, and she knows – just knows, like that – that this is a lie. Not because she doesn’t trust Maria (she does, more than anything) but because the way she tenses up feels so familiar (so Maria). It’s what she does when she’s trying to hide that she’s hurt and Carol doesn’t really know how she knows that, but she clings to it.

It hurts her most when Maria throws it back to her though –“is that really who you are?” she asks and Carol doesn’t know who she is anymore and she can only try to learn herself in the reflection that shines through Maria’s eyes, in the concern and care and aching impossible _love_ that shines through her eyes.

She would happily sink into those eyes, eyes that know her even across a chasm of six years and who knows how many lightyears and an entire host of lost memories, lost identity.

Monica calls to her, with fragments of that lost past and she thinks that perhaps she sees only flashes because that is how they all remember – using images and ticket stubs and business cards and chipped coffee cups to form a life in their mind.

“We became your _real_ family” Monica Rambeau says, and it carries such gravitas, such importance and she knows that it is true even without her saying it.

She was someone – she is someone, with two names and all, and she knows it before she even picks up the scrapped dog-tags.

“My name –“ she says, because she remembers, suddenly, and oh so desperately wants to hear it from Maria’s own lips (it is only from Maria’s lips that she remembers her name, spoken softly and sweetly and angrily and everything – every gloriously human emotion – between. Perhaps it is her proximity to the woman).

She is broken off by a knock at the door and comes crashing, falling back down to reality.

_Control your emotions_.

“Don’t answer it.”

It’s funny, she may think in retrospect, how the Kree never seemed to have a problem with her anger, as long as it was pointed with all of its seemingly righteous destructive power at the Skrulls. Now however, she puts it to good use, trying to scare away this neighbor-shaped Talos.

Except.

Except Talos is standing in their – in Maria’s living room that is, and a some lackey is in the yard with Monica. This burns more than any harm that they had ever done to her. That little girl would not, could not be hurt under her watch. (“I’ll always look out for you”, she whispers to the small bundle in her arms).

This memory is not a flash. No, it is a long, drawn out suffering, an excruciating step-by-step. She makes that decision, shoots the engine, because – because why? A monumental, unwavering trust in Lawson that she does not precisely remember now, so strong that even the revelation of Lawson’s true nature couldn’t shake it? A belief that the engine could be dangerous in the hands of these people, this wrong side in an unjust war? A knowledge that she is the only one who can stop that now? What was her life, after all, compared to the lives that Lawson had promised to save?

It is too much for Carol. The unsteady foundation had been completely torn down now, and it lay at her feet where her _self_ was supposed to be. It is all well and good for Talos to try and twist that into her helping them somehow, but she doesn’t know, doesn’t have anywhere to land.  

Anywhere, that is, besides Maria. She sees herself in those eyes as kindly as she thinks anyone has ever seen herself. “Carol Danvers”, Maria says and Carol leans into her embrace as if it is the only thing that is keeping her grounded, as if it is the only thing holding her up. (It is).

Carol can’t help but shake her head, though, at one detail, one huge, glaring incongruity.

“Rambeau,” she murmurs into Maria’s hair. “Carol Rambeau”

The arms around her shoulders tighten.

When they finally pull back from each other, after what could be another millennium, after Carol’s world has restructured itself once again, Maria looks at her, really truly looks at her, and then looks up at Monica, seemingly having a silent conversation with her daughter. Only a moment later, Monica is leading Fury and Talos back towards the house, under the guise of making dinner and needing adult supervision to do so.

Neither Fury nor Talos argue – Talos was close enough to hear Carol’s correction and knows a conversation needs to be had – and Fury isn’t one to turn down the promise of dinner.

“Why did you say that?” Maria questions, once the trio has passed out of earshot.

“It felt right. That is my name isn’t it? Carol Rambeau?” Now that she has said it once, she can’t seem to stop herself, doesn’t want to.

“Oh, Carol” Maria sighs, and reaches out to stroke her cheek. The gesture inundates Carol with flashes, memories that she can’t even decipher, they’re coming so fast. She draws her brows together, confused as to why Maria won’t just confirm what she knows to be true now, her own name.

Instead Maria takes a deep breath and looks to the sky, as if seeking some kind of solace there.

“You, you are Carol Rambeau, you’re right. But only to us”

“Us as in…”

“You and me, Carol. Monica, now that she’s old enough. Just us. Legally, to the rest of the world, you are Carol Danvers. But you’re Carol Rambeau to us.”

There is such relief in hearing that – in hearing her name – come out of her mouth, that Carol almost doesn’t dig deeper. She squints, as if somehow that will help her remember (remember matching golden bands that were never worn outside the house, remember whispered vows in the dark of the night).

“Because we were both women?” she says as if it is a question. Maria just nods in response. She aches to reach out, to give comfort, though she does not know if she is capable of that after six years of shutting any comfort down – doesn’t know if she was ever capable. She finds herself leaning into Maria anyway.

* * *

 

“Vers” the Supreme Intelligence calls her, and it is like a taunt, reminding her of all she had lost. Her name is Carol Rambeau, she thinks, but in her strange limbo of identities, of the names known by her family and the name known by the rest of the Earth and the name known by the rest of the universe, well.

“My name is _Carol_ ” she tells the Supreme Intelligence, and that will have to do.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks as always to @neo-persephone on tumblr for inspiring/helping/motivating me  
> it's my humble opinion that Carol absolutely WOULD take Maria's last name if given the chance, so.  
> un-betaed, all errors totally and egregiously my own.   
> title from Spectrum, by Florence + the Machine.


End file.
